The Narrow Door: Salvation Outside the Church?

The Readings at Mass this Sunday speak about the universality of salvation; that is, how God intends everyone to be saved and reached Heaven. The Gospel in particular raises the question of who will be saved? This is a sensitive thought in an age where there is wide spread religion indifferentism and relativism. Many people in our society—even those who believe in God—hold the notion that one religion of philosophy of life is as good as another; the basic criterion for many nowadays is that my truth is as good as your truth.

For the Christian, that cannot be so. We believe in one Person, Jesus Christ our Saviour, who is the unique revelation of God and is Himself The Way, the Truth and The Life, There is no salvation possible outside of Christ who is the one Saviour. However, this involves us often having to hold two truths in a kind of tension: the teaching of St. Paul that God wants everyone to be saved and, on the other hand, the ancient teaching of the Church that outside of the Church there is no salvation. God will never let anyone be lost through ignorance of the Him. What we may never do is know Christ and then reject Him or chose some other more appealing way of life over Him. God has made us members of His Body, members of His family the Church. Our vocation is to strive to live faithfully this vocation, and strive also to bring others into the boat of Peter, Christ's Church.

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Now this was first posted on One Peter Five, which I love, but some criticise because it is a site critical of progressive catholic attitudes and modernism. Anyway some people these days dismiss certain sources because they tend to contradict their own agenda. I don't, as I have said here numerous times before, we are all parts of the body of Christ and that body has many parts (cf. 1 Cor 12). If I agree with everything someone says, I'm probably reading my own blog. We all get it wrong sometimes.

Anyway, I was concerned initially that this would be seen as a diatribe against the pope with an agenda. This would make the contents easier to dismiss.
Almost read “The Dictator Pope”, of course it is all libelous gossip, the Church is not a dictatorship, is it?
— raymond blake (…

Vaticanista Marco Tossati reports that even the faithless men who put Pope Francis on the throne of St. Peter are losing patience with his laissez faire, "make a mess" approach to being pope.

In his article on the AAS inclusion of the Buenos Aires directives, he remarks:
A cardinal of great renown, a former diplomat, who has served an impressive career at the head of Congregations and in high offices in the Secretariat of State, is said to have reproved the Pope for his actions [as Pope], saying to him essentially, “We elected you to make reforms, not to smash everything.” News of this conversation — if it can be called a conversation — has spread through the Vatican, because it took place at a high decibel level, which carried through the fragile barrier of the doors and walls. The cardinal in question was one of those who supported the candidacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the conclave of 2013.Gloria.tv reports that this is most likely the Argentinian Leonardo Sandri, the…

Any human being with any iota of common sense would be appalled at the treatment of Nigel and Sally Rowe the parents of a six-year-old boy who have removed him from his primary school after another child in his class began wearing a dress to school.

The couple said under the school's bullying policy their son faced being disciplined for misidentifying the gender of the six-year-old pupil.
They've been subjected to this sort of madness on television:
"What gender are your children?"

LGBT rights campaigner Jane Fae challenges parents who withdrew 6yo son from school with transgender child pic.twitter.com/pTSEEupfUz
— Victoria Derbyshire (@VictoriaLIVE) September 11, 2017
And also from the likes of Stella Creasy and Anna Soubry. It is incredible to see MPs detracting and abusing an ordinary couple who just want the best for their child.
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